Generally, contact pads are used by semiconductor devices to provide for signal, power, and ground connectivity to exterior devices. Within the semiconductor devices the contact pads are generally connected to metallization layers located over the active devices. The metallization layers route the signal, power, and ground connections to their desired location, and also interconnect the various active devices in order to form functional circuitry.
However, due to routing congestion from the sheer number of contact pads, these contact pads are typically bunched together along the outside periphery of the device, which works to limit any reduction in the size of the overall device. Further, as semiconductor devices have grown more powerful and more complicated, the internal routing interconnects within the metallization layers have also become more complicated. This has resulted in an increase in the number of metallization layers, as well as an increase in resistivity and power consumption due to the extra layers high resistive vias that are required. These complications have also led to the two upper most metallization layers to typically be almost completely dedicated to routing the power and ground in what is referred to as a power mesh of metallization layers.
By requiring the signal, power, and ground connections to all be made through the contact pads over the metallization layer, the complexity and distance of the routing required for the power, ground, and signal interconnects is increased, leading to larger resistivities, larger power consumption, greater number of metallization layers, and larger overall production costs. As such, what is needed is a method to reduce the complexity of the signal, power, and ground interconnections through the metallization layers.
Corresponding numerals and symbols in the different figures generally refer to corresponding parts unless otherwise indicated. The figures are drawn to clearly illustrate the relevant aspects of the embodiments and are not necessarily drawn to scale.